My friend works for a market-research company. I signed up to take surveys and I get points for each one I complete. I had enough to cash in, so I got Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. I had played with one of the recipes from the book that was published in Mother Earth News and thought maybe there would be some other ideas in there.
Dan saw a recipe for these pastries made with brioche dough, pastry cream and apricot halves. We went for them last weekend. I was so proud of him--he did 99% of the work. Unfortunately they didn't meet our expectations. Either our oven is too hot or there was an error with the cooking time (most likely the former), but we pulled them from the oven 10 minutes early and they were on their way to burning. They were edible, but just weren't the sweet, decadent delight we had expected.
Next.
When I was dabbling with baking bread this summer, I was playing with a pain de campagne from another bread book I have. I tried it again this week. It takes 4 days to make and rises with wild yeast alone. I unfortunately didn't get the timing right--to make it work you really need to start the dough at night, not in the morning as I did, unless you want to stay up until 3 am baking bread. Which I did not. So I opted to retard the dough in the fridge after the final refreshment. I baked it last night. It wasn't a total failure--it desperately needs more salt (I used kosher salt, but I'm guessing they wanted me to use table). I pulled off a section to use as the starter so I'll try again this weekend. It's a tad bit dense, but I'm hoping if I made it properly this time, the texture will be better.
Also up this weekend: Oatmeal-Pumpkin Bread. I think that will be fabulous in my favorite pancake recipe, Bread Pudding Pancakes.
Our winter CSA starts back up again this week. I'm desperate for it to begin again. We took a hiatus after being CSA members for nearly 2 years non-stop. We also bought into a meat share, which means we get 4-5 different meats each month. Yay!
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